What a Day in the Life of an SEO Specialist Looks Like

Plenty of people have some notion of search as a tool, because it’s an integral part of marketing, both for small mom-and-pop operations and for massive global conglomerates. Yet very few people understand it in detail, especially search engine optimization or SEO. Most marketers tend to think a few keywords sprinkled throughout some webpages will do the trick, but there’s much more to successful SEO than that.

That’s where SEO expertise comes into play. The reality is, you have to really know the ins and outs and intricacies of organic search to get websites and webpages to rank well. Savvy businesses know they need someone on staff who knows more than the basics if they want to win on the search results page, and so they seek out an SEO specialist to make that happen.

As a result, the demand for SEO experts is strong. SEO is the most in-demand digital marketing skill according to Smart Insights and CMO.com. There are more than 10,300 SEO-related jobs available in the U.S. and 8,400 in the UK, according to Indeed.com. In India, over 5,700 jobs on naukri.com require an SEO skillset.

If you’ve dabbled in SEO or digital marketing, and you’re looking for a way to move your career to the next level, for more excitement or a higher pay or both, consider becoming an SEO specialist. SEO specialists optimize websites and manage content and links on various platforms to make.

To learn more about the role of an SEO specialist and the tasks they tackle each day, read on…

An SEO Specialist Tackles Many Kinds of Tasks in a Day

Real SEO takes much more than keywords. Think about all of the different components that are part of a sound SEO strategy, and it will become obvious that your days can have a lot of variety. A typical day will probably include some combination of the following SEO tasks:

Keyword Research

Google is constantly making changes to the algorithms that determine how websites work, but that has not removed keywords from the equation. Keywords are still the starting point for most searches. As an SEO specialist, you will do keyword research to determine popularity, competitiveness, and relevance, so you can create the best possible list of keywords to focus on.

Optimization

As we’ve said, SEO takes more than just keywords, and optimization will be part of your role as an SEO specialist. This includes both on-page optimization, to ensure you’re serving up quality content, good meta data, a clean HTML structure, internal links, and pages that load quickly. It will also involve testing different elements to determine how to improve your conversion rates on any given webpage.

Link Building

Google doesn’t only look at your websites and content, but at what others “say” about you too. By “say,” we mean a link to. When other websites link to yours, it’s a vote of confidence in your content, and one that Google takes into account when ranking you. Part of your job as an SEO specialist will be looking for opportunities to get other websites to legitimately link to yours.

URL Building

As an SEO specialist, chances are your organization or client will have multiple types of campaigns running at once, driving traffic to your webpages. You’ll want to know which traffic came from which source. For example, someone might click on a link in a newsletter or in a tweet. They might get to your website from a Facebook post or from an ad. You will “build” unique URLs for these sources so you can pinpoint exactly where traffic comes from.

Analytics

The only way to know what’s working is to look at analytics. As an SEO specialist, you’ll regularly check analytics to see how websites, landing pages and keywords are performing, as well as to see where traffic is coming from.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile matters more than ever, now that Google says it will start using the mobile-first index in 2018. It probably won’t be an ongoing task for you, but initially, at least, you’ll need to make sure all web content is optimized for mobile devices.

Staying Current

Speaking up Google making changes, part of your job as an SEO specialist will involve reading articles, blogs and forums so you keeping up with changes and developments in SEO. Google is constantly tweaking, and you need to know what it’s up to so you’re not caught off guard.

Staying Focused

In today’s fast-paced world with emails and texts and chat messages constantly vying for our attention, not to mention tweets and coworkers, lots of things will want to distract you. Given the variety of tasks, you’ll already be juggling while an SEO specialist, staying focused will be key to productive work days!

Coordinating With Other Digital Marketing Teams

Although you’ll have plenty on your plate as an SEO specialist, you’ll probably also spend a significant amount of time working with other teams that are part of the digital marketing effort, including:

The social media marketing team: Social media marketing and SEO play very well together. As an SEO specialist, you’ll likely work with the social media team to help boost brand awareness and therefore authority (something Google considers when ranking you).

The paid search marketing team: The pay-per-click (PPC) team will be focused on paid search and ads, but you will probably coordinate with them to find promising keywords.

The PR team: Press releases and other publicity materials are content, and content is needed for SEO. You’ll likely work with the PR team to make sure any content they produce is optimized for SEO.

The content marketing team: As with the PR team, your role as the SEO specialist will be to ensure content produced is optimized for SEO. You will probably be part of the content strategy team as a result.

The web development team: SEO doesn’t happen without good structure behind the scenes. You’ll probably work with the team that builds the websites and landing pages to make sure pages are clean and load fast, and when you need to do testing.

A Typical Day in the Life of an SEO Specialist

Most SEO specialists describe some kind of mix of the above tasks when asked about a typical work day, stating that the actual time spent on each depends on what’s currently going on. For example, when a new campaign or website is in the planning stages, you’re going to spend more time on keyword research while keeping up with industry news might be something that only happens sporadically when there’s time.

Emails and meetings were a constant for everyone, however, taking up a large portion of the day. The types of emails and meetings depend on what kind of SEO job you have. You can work as an SEO specialist in one of two ways: either for an employer or for clients. Although in general, the daily tasks are the same in either role, there are some differences, especially when it comes to emails and meetings. Client-facing meetings and internal meetings tend to be very different beasts, for example, and part of your time spent on email could very well be focused on educating clients on the intricacies of SEO.

Regardless of whether you’re doing SEO in-house or for an agency or clients, however, your path to becoming an SEO specialist has to start with mastering the skills. SEO is too important to be learned on the job, and employers who need an expert are going to seek out and hire someone with proven skills, not train up someone with basic knowledge. The employers (and jobs) are out there, and, all you need to do is decide to become an SEO specialist, get trained, and get hired.

About the Author

Ryan is a demand generation marketer with expertise in email marketing, lead generation, marketing automation and content development. He works alongside sales teams to ensure that marketing campaigns develop leads that are well-educated about the product and brand. His work experience includes both e-commerce and enterprise marketing; however, his focus at Simplilearn is on developing and nurturing the enterprise prospects. Outside the office, Ryan's hobbies and interests include sports, books, and travel.